Public health jurisprudence is based on a deference to scientific decision
making. This deference may be expressed by incorporating scientific standards
into legislation or by delegating the right to make public health decisions to
boards of health or individual health officers who are skilled in the science of
public health. This deference is illustrated in the best known of the traditional
public health cases, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, [Jacobson v. Massachusetts,
197 U.S. 11 (1905)] in which the scientific basis of a Massachusetts law
requiring vaccination for smallpox was challenged.

Mr. Jacobson believed that the scientific basis for vaccination was unsound and
that he would suffer if he was vaccinated. The Massachusetts Supreme Court
found the statute consistent with the Massachusetts state constitution, and
Jacobson appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court first ruled that being
subject to vaccination was the price for living in society. The Court then
considered Jacobson’s right to contest the scientific basis of the Massachusetts
vaccination requirement. Accepting that some reasonable people still
questioned the efficacy of vaccination, the Court nonetheless found that it was
within the legislature’s prerogative to adopt one from many conflicting views
on a scientific issue: “It is no part of the function of a court or a jury to
determine which of two modes was likely to be most effective for the
protection of the public against disease. That was for the legislative
department to determine in the light of all the information it had or could
obtain.”

In a recent case upholding the closing of a bathhouse as a disease control
measure, the court showed the same deference to discretionary orders by
public health officers: “It is not for the courts to determine which scientific view
is correct in ruling upon whether the police power has been properly exercised.
The judicial function is exhausted with the discovery that the relation between
means and ends is not wholly vain and fanciful, an illusory pretense.” [City of
New York v. New Saint Mark’s Baths, 497 N.Y.S.2d 979, 983 (1986)
]